


Light Years Away

by lettersbyelise



Series: Wordless I Love Yous [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Based on a Tumblr Post, Curse Breaker Draco Malfoy, Falling In Love, Fluff, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Gift Fic, Happy Ending, Have sex with your arch-nemesis, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of Holiday Smut, Not Actually Unrequited Love, as the proverb goes, when in rome, wordless i love yous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 09:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18735886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersbyelise/pseuds/lettersbyelise
Summary: No one told Harry about the training courses young Aurors and Curse Breakers have in common, just like Harry never told anyone about his one-night encounter with Draco Malfoy two months prior.





	Light Years Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quicksilvermaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilvermaid/gifts).



> Dearest Quicksilvermaid, 
> 
> I was so happy to get your prompt, "Throwing away their piles of tissues when they have a cold." 
> 
> This “ficlet” got a bit out of hand… a bit angsty, a bit lyrical, a bit fluffy, a lil bit smutty. But hey, someone gets sick and someone cleans up their piles of tissues! So I totally followed the prompt!! Yay!!

If Harry runs fast enough, maybe he can catch him. Catch him before the Aurors release him, and he's gone, beyond reach, like the fading light of a Patronus.

A  _ Patronus. _ That's exactly what Draco looks like, framed by the red-robed Aurors in the dark corridor outside of the Wizengamot courtroom. Pale hair and skin glowing, he’s dressed in sky-blue robes, as though moved by the irrepressible desire to be what they don’t expect of him. Harry noticed how Lucius and Narcissa looked away when their son stepped in the middle of the courtroom, humble but fiercely truthful, to testify and receive his sentence. The older Malfoys were dressed in black from head to toe, same as Harry had always seen them. Draco stood out even more.

Draco’s demeanour might have motivated the Wizemgamot’s decision as much as Harry's testimony, as much as Draco's muted yet sincere apology. Draco Malfoy would spend the next five years on parole, but would be allowed to return to Hogwarts to finish his education, then pursue the career of his choice.

Harry finds Draco in a narrow corridor outside the courtroom. When he sees him, he skitters to a halt, the soles of his worn trainers muffled on the tiles.

“Hi,” he calls out to Draco. 

“Potter,” Draco says, eyebrows lifted. It’s not so much a greeting as it is a simple acknowledgment. It shuts down Harry's momentum more efficiently than Draco’s usual sneer would. His last name is no longer a taunt in Draco's mouth; it's a wall risen between them. It's a warning to steer clear.

“I'll see you at Hogwarts,” Harry says. Feels lame that he doesn't have the right words for the circumstance, that he doesn’t know how to reach out (How do you reach out to your old nemesis, though?). He turns on his heels and leaves Draco be — to go wherever people like Draco Malfoy go. Wherever Patronuses fade to when their caster has forgotten about them.

 

***

 

“Malfoy is so quiet,” Harry muses, pushing his porridge around his plate. One would think that, after starving out in the woods for months, his appetite would come back with a vengeance. That seems to be the case for Ron, and even Hermione, but not Harry. Not when Draco Malfoy looks like the ghost of his old self, so close yet worlds apart, sitting alone at the end of the Eighth Year table.

Harry catches his friends exchanging glances over their mugs of tea. Their collusion rankles a bit. Ron and Hermione do their best to keep acting like they're still the trio they’ve always been since First Year, but Harry notices the nuances of their friendship. The way Harry is no longer the centre of their friendly constellation.

“What?” He says, hoping he doesn’t sound aggressive.

Ron leans close.

“So what? You _ promised,” _ he hisses.

“Promised what?”

“That you wouldn't start again. With — with  _ him.” _

“Maybe Malfoy is quiet because he chooses to be,” Hermione adds, thoughtful. “You know. After the trials… He’s watching his step.”

Ron nods. “Smart move, if you ask me. Best way to pull through your last year when…” he trails, gesturing with his fork. 

“When…?” Harry prods. Something about Ron and Hermione's tones prickles unpleasantly. 

Hermione drops her napkin on the table and rises with an air of finality.

“When you're a  _ war criminal on parole,” _ she finishes the sentence for Ron, voice low. When Harry tears his gaze away from the pale, sorrowful silhouette of Malfoy at the end of the table, she's fixing him with a stern gaze. “I know that look on you, Harry,” she says. Then, as she leaves the table on her way to the library, she grabs his shoulder. A comforting gesture as well as a warning. “Be careful.”

 

***

 

He runs into Draco in Rome that summer. In the quaint farmers’ market set in a corner of the Piazza Navona, as Harry pays for a small bag of downy, sun-kissed apricots, Draco bumps into him, turns to apologise, sees who Harry is.

Startled, they stare at each other in the midday sun.

“You're in Rome?” They both ask at the same time, Harry's surprise overlapping with Draco's drawl. They smile, quiet and tentative. The three feet of distance between them seem to stretch, then retract, smaller.

“Well, yes,” Draco explains. “My parents and I used to spend our summers in Italy every other year, until—”

He cuts himself off, falls quiet, eyes on the cobblestones of the piazza.

“It's my birthday,” Harry provides, an answer to a question Draco didn't ask. 

Draco looks up from the ground, directly at Harry, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Happy birthday then, Potter. How come you’re here alone?”

Harry smiles, shrugs to hide his blush. “I wanted something quiet. I didn't feel like spending it in England this year.”

Instead he spends his birthday tangled in Draco’s sheets, in a hushed hotel room bathed in the dim light of the full moon. Draco rides him slow and deep, the pale column of his long body rising above Harry, shining with a sheen of sweat. Harry fists the sheets, pants for breath, takes in the smell of the night wafting through the open window, thyme and old stones and Draco's soft skin under the pads of his fingers, against the coarse hair of his thighs.

 

***

 

No one told Harry about the training courses young Aurors and Curse Breakers have in common, just like Harry never told anyone about his one-night encounter with Draco Malfoy two months prior. He’s carried the memory of it like a secret since then. Sometimes, if he focuses hard enough, he can still taste the salt from Draco’s skin, the weight of his cock on his tongue, the wet, maddening slide of his erection against Harry’s stomach. 

Draco attends the Law Enforcement Rules and Guidelines seminar like all the other Curse Breaker trainees. Harry watches him from three rows behind. Only three rows separate them, yet the hard set of Draco’s shoulders, the straight line of his back, the steely determination of his gaze, place him out of reach, miles away from Harry. He’s got a sharp, short haircut since last summer, so unlike the soft length of white-blond strands curling around his face as he leaned over Harry back then, as he brought his forehead to his. He turns his head, glances over his shoulder, only once. He holds Harry’s gaze long enough for something forlorn and wistful to pass over his features. Harry barely has time to open his mouth, to lift his eyebrows in a silent  _ hello  _ — Draco has already turned, looked away.

The seminar lasts three days. Draco might as well be a stranger among the group of young Curse Breakers. He barely acknowledges Harry. A simple nod in lieu of a morning greeting is the only interaction he offers him. 

The seminar lasts three days, and the taste of their summer lovemaking sours in Harry’s mouth. 

 

***

 

With time, the memory fades. Harry grows tired of chasing after it. It still aches sometimes, a dull discomfort in the pit of his stomach. The image still flares in his brain one second, only to be doused with cold reality the next. He’s learned to live with it, though. He watches his friends set up dates for him, try to gently push him into the arms of lovely, pretty strangers. Sometimes he brings one of those strangers home, lets them press him into the sheets, hold his wrists, fuck him with the dedication and diligence they all pour into fucking  _ Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived.  _

Draco is a Curse Breaker now — Harry hears on the Ministry grapevine that he’s the department’s rising star despite his controversial past.

Harry’s not doing too bad at the Aurors, himself. So it’s only mildly surprising when Robards pairs him and Draco up on the next high-profile case: dismantling a ring of illegal potion dealers who communicate through secret runes scribbled on walls, hidden in plain sight under undetectable concealment charms.

That morning on the case, Harry spends a good five minutes staring at the elegant curve of Draco’s back, hunched over a cobble on the corner of Diagon Alley that he suspects hides one of the runes. That’s when he realises he’s been deluding himself. The memory of him and Draco all those years ago won’t go away, no matter how much distance they put between themselves.

“I’ve missed you,” he blurts — words without filter, without shield.

Draco’s head snaps up. “Missed me.” His voice is the same bored drawl as ever. If Harry didn’t know him so well, he’d almost not hear the question in it.

“We act like strangers around each other.” Harry rubs a hand over his face, under his glasses. A gust of wind rushes into the narrow alley, ruffling their hair, sending their robes billowing around them. “I don’t want that. I wish we could be — closer.”

Draco stands, brushes his hands down his uniform. Except for his mussed hair, he looks as put together as he always does. 

Tall. Pale. 

Cold as marble. 

Light years away from Harry.

“This isn’t about you, Harry,” he says, his voice a low growl. It’s getting dark, and the contrast of his cool gaze and the warmth of Harry’s name in his mouth make Harry shiver. “This is about self-preservation. This is about me, protecting myself.”

“From  _ what?” _ Harry asks. His question has an angry, disbelieving bite to it. But Draco just stares, a look that seems meaningful, that Harry still can’t decipher. Then he shakes his head, strides past Harry, towards the next patch of wall to scan for dark magic.

Harry watches him go, arms around himself. “From what?” He asks again, quieter. The question echoes against the walls of the alley, and Draco never responds.

 

***

 

After they successfully solve their first case, Robards keeps giving them assignments together. Apparently, they make a “brilliant team.” 

Harry takes the orders with unconcealed enthusiasm, Draco with a long-suffering sigh. Yet he still takes them, Harry notes, hopeful. He still works with Harry, no matter how reluctant he appears. No matter how much distance he puts between them.

They end up  _ de facto _ sharing an office. They spend so much time together, Robards’ assistant complained —  _ relocating Harry’s partners to other offices is a nightmare, Gawain, a nightmare, we have a shortage of office space and you ask me to do this, it’s the same story every other week, Gawain, make room for Draco Malfoy, might as well give him a permanent desk next to Harry’s and be done with it! _

Harry’s not complaining, though. He gets to be near Draco every day now. Sharing close quarters with him is the sweetest kind of torture. Learning Draco’s little morning routine (tea, two sugars, a dash of lemon; go through last night’s memos first before even  _ thinking  _ of discussing the topic du jour). Seeing the little realities that shatter the perfect image Draco wants to project (the week before he gets a haircut, when his hair is almost long enough to tuck behind his ears; the darker smudges under his eyes at the end of a long case; the Muggle label-maker he secretly loves and keeps hidden in his desk drawer, that Harry pretends he doesn’t know about).

Draco still looks perfect, day after day, cool and untouchable Yet he warms up to Harry, too, almost against his will. Like he’s letting his guard down, infinitesimally so. Like he’s no longer  _ watching his step _ all the time around Harry. Like he’s letting Harry close some of the distance between them, one day at a time.

Perhaps, Harry admits, he understands what Draco means by self-preservation. Understands it far too late, when he’s already so stupidly in love with Draco there’s no going back, no hope for self-preservation anymore. He wonders if he should have guarded his heart more fiercely, the way Draco does — but can’t bring himself to regret his own recklessness, the Gryffindorness of his feelings.

Until one day, as Harry’s settling behind his desk with his morning coffee, Draco enters, making a beeline to his desk. He’s hiding his face behind his hand, and when he sits, he makes sure his chair is turned away from Harry.

Harry’s first reaction is alarm. Concern. 

Then, when he hears the muffled sniffle coming from Draco’s direction… understanding dawns on him. 

He stifles a smile.

“Draco…?”

Draco answers with a grunt. Not his usual, perfectly enunciated  _ “Yes.” _

“Draco… Are you—” Harry ponders his next word, fighting his grin and the beginning of a laugh, “Are you  _ sick?” _

“Doh,” Draco replies, nasal and pathetic. “Doh, I’b dot!” He turns to Harry then, scowling, furious that he’s been caught. The sides of his nose are pink and a little chaffed, and it’s utterly charming.

Harry bursts out laughing. “Draco, it’s okay. You’re allowed to be sick!”

“Dis is bery undignified,” Draco complains. His next statement is cut off by a resounding sneeze that makes Harry laugh harder and Draco search frantically for a tissue. “I should hab stayed hobe,” he whimpers, blowing his nose.

“Why? It doesn’t matter to me that you’ve a cold. That you’re—” Harry lets out a mock-gasp, grins at him, “--Merlin forbid, that you’re  _ human.” _

“I don’t want you to see be like dis,” Draco complains, but there’s a note of doubt — of desperation in his voice. Harry feels his insides melt with how much he adores him. How much he wants to prove him that— 

He rises and walks to Draco’s desk. He sits on the edge of it, looks down at Draco. Draco avoids his gaze. He looks… just as  _ perfect  _ as he always does. Clothes pressed, collar buttoned up to the last button, hair combed within an inch of its life. The only thing giving away his current state of illness is the slight puffiness of his nostrils and the pink blush rising up his cheeks.

“Why not?” Harry asks softly. It takes all his self-restraint not to reach for Draco. His knuckles itch to touch Draco’s neck, Draco’s cheek.

“Why dot?” Draco bursts out, affronted on Harry’s behalf. He gestures at his face before grabbing another tissue. “I’m _ disgusting, _ dat’s why!”

“You’re not,” Harry laughs, a low rumble in his chest. With a swish of his wand, he vanishes the used tissues littering Draco’s desk. Takes Draco’s hands in his, leans in, and kisses him. Kisses Draco speechless with the lightest press of lips. Pulls back, Draco’s expression a mixture of startled and yearning.

“You reckless idiot,” Draco breathes, like he doesn’t quite believe what just happened. “You’ll catch my cold.”

Harry leans in again and presses his forehead to Draco’s. He’s so close now, Harry can feel the heat of his skin. “Self-preservation is overrated.”

“Speak for yourself,” Draco mutters, smiles like he can’t help it. “Bloody Gryffindors.”

“It is,” Harry shakes his head, filled with fondness. “To think I had the slightest hope of guarding my heart when I’m around you. When will you understand, Draco…?” Harry smiles and kisses Draco again, and when he pulls back Draco chases his lips with his own. “...you’re perfect. Even more so when you think you’re not.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I love kudos and comments!
> 
> Find the originak tumblr prompt (and post) [here](https://lettersbyelise.tumblr.com/post/184688371436/i-love-33-and-drarry).
> 
> Come say hi to [quicksilvermaid](https://quicksilvermaid.tumblr.com/) and [me](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lettersbyelise) on Tumblr!


End file.
